Now Facebook introduces Twitter's 'trends' feature

Two months after the introduction of hashtags, Facebook is all set to experiment with another Twitter feature – trending topics. According various media reports, the service is only being tested with a small number of Facebook’s mobile users.

Those users who are part of the test group will notice a tile in their mobile news feed that lists one or more trending keywords. The trending topics feature will basically be a timeline card that shows the hottest subjects being talked about on the social network. If a user taps on that topic, it will show posts from other users, including those who're not directly connected.

It can be observed that Facebook has borrowed a few notable features from Twitter over a period of time. They include adding verified accounts, introducing the option to mention other users with the ‘@’ symbol, follow influencers, and hashtags.

In another development, Facebook announced that the Graph Search feature will now be available to everyone visiting the site in US English, regardless of where they live.

Facebook’s numerous features have been leveraged by brands effectively so far. exchange4media looks at how the ‘trending topics’ feature will benefit brands on Facebook...

Emergence of Facebook influencers: Twitter trends happen because of strong backing from influencers. Basically, an influencer is someone with a large user base. Brands usually associate with an influencer on Twitter to get better reach and make discussions trend worthy.

Facebook’s trending topic feature will give birth to a new set of influencers. Considering Facebook has much larger user base, we look forward to see if brands will go all out to create larger conversations using this feature.

Yet another contest ground: Twitter trends have been effectively used by brands to create noise around new launches , product features and other such impressions. With Facebook launching the trending feature, it will be interesting to see how brands use this new tool.

Will FB succeed in wooing users with these borrowed concepts? Watch this space for more…